


and a sword will pierce your own soul

by HuiLian



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Mythology - Freeform, background MoW/queen thief, background eugenides/irene, this is just an excuse to write my own myths in the QT fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:27:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29246538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HuiLian/pseuds/HuiLian
Summary: The night before his wedding, the future King of Attolia stayed up with his father. And for once, listened.
Relationships: Eugenides & Minister of War (Queen's Thief)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 25





	and a sword will pierce your own soul

**Author's Note:**

> look at me! producing content! but yeah, this is basically an excuse to write my own myths in QT's fandom in the guise of MoW&Gen bonding, because this gruff dad loves his son, okay??????
> 
> enjoy!
> 
> (title from the bible... again. Luke 2:35)

It was silent in Gen’s room. It should not have been. The night of the _reni_ was supposed to be a night filled with laughter and teasing for the soon-to-be wed, and, even more importantly, advice and wisdom from those who had walked the road of marriage earlier than them. But it was only Hector in the room with Eugenides, and Hector did not know how to fill the silence. 

In every other _reni_ night he was in, Hector hadn’t needed to fill the silence. The silence filled itself. The room should have been filled with dozens of already-married friends and family, sharing their stories and wisdom and advice, often contradicting with each other. 

If they had been in Eddis, if Gen had married an Eddisian, the bride would have been doing this in her own rooms, with her own friends and family giving her their own advice and wisdom. But they were not in Eddis, and Gen was going to marry an Attolian queen, and this wedding was a dance of shadows and lies and tricks. 

And so Hector had no wisdom nor advice to give to Gen, because what advice could he give the Thief of Eddis about shadows and lies and tricks that he did not already know? It should have been his wife here. She would have had something to say, and she had been the better story-teller out of the two of them anyway. 

When she had fallen from the roof, years and years ago, the amount of stories in Hector’s house had dwindled almost to none. 

But here was something he knew, with absolute certainty, was the truth. “Your mother would have been proud,” he said, finally breaking the silence in the room.

Gen snorted. “She would have dissected my plan and told me each and every single flaw in it.”

She would, but Hector raised his eyebrows and waited. Sure enough, after a few seconds, Gen sighed and continued. “Then she would have kissed my forehead, put me in the finest clothes she could find, and maybe stolen me a necklace to give to my bride, since I had given her earrings already.”

She would. She did much of the same for Xenia, the only one of their children whose wedding she had been alive to attend.

But what Gen didn’t know, was that the night after all the celebration had ended, when their daughter had left their home to become a married woman, she had climbed into their bed, curled on Hector’s chest, and cried until morning.

And just like that, Hector knew what to say. 

“Once, there was a very clever young man with the name Phanes. He has cleverness in spades, but nothing much of anything else. One day, when he was collecting firewood in the forest, he saw something many men would kill to see. Some of the spirits of the trees in that forest had left their home to walk for a moment in the guise Earth had given to mankind. They were beautiful, and Phanes was captivated by them. He carefully put down his firewood, and hid behind a rock, for if he had hidden in the trees, the spirits would have certainly known him. 

“He watched them, as they laughed and sang and danced. For you see, in their guise as trees, they have all the power they would ever need, but they cannot laugh, and they cannot sing, and they cannot dance. He watched them, and without even realizing it, he had fallen in love with the one that had laughed the loudest and sang the sweetest and danced the brightest.

“The more he watched them, the more he found himself falling in love with her. The thought of leaving without her became unbearable. But he had nothing for which to tempt a woman, much less a spirit of the trees, who long for nothing in their long, long life. 

“However, he had one thing in spades. Cleverness. He realized that as the spirits left their trees, they hang their stola on their branches. Phanes decided that he would search for the most beautiful of the trees in this forest, for she who had taken his heart surely had the most beautiful tree of all, and steal the stola from her branches. This way, he thinks, she would not be able to return to the trees, and he could make her stay.”

“Father,” Eugenides said. Hector looked at his son’s face, and realized that this was the man who had taken Hamiathes’s Gift from Hephestia herself, who had stayed in the temple of his namesake and heard the messenger goddess speak, who had called on the Great Goddess and gotten an answer. 

But he had no other wisdom to share, in what was supposed to be a night of wisdom, and so he continued. 

“He stole the stola from her branches, and hidden it deep within his firewood. Then, he returned to his hiding space in the rocks, and watched some more.

“When the sun reached the horizon, all of the spirits decided that they would return to their trees, for they had laughed and sang and danced enough for the day. One by one, they took their stola, and slipped back into their trees, becoming one with the forest once again. 

“All of them, except for one. To Phanes’s delight, it was the spirit who had laughed the loudest and sang the sweetest and danced the brightest. She stood in front of her tree, and, finding that her stola was no longer there, cried out for the other spirits.

“‘Have you seen my stola?’ she asked.

“‘No, Callidora, we haven’t seen it,’ the rest of the spirits answered.

“They looked and looked and looked, but none of them could find it, for the stola was now safe inside Phanes’s firewood. Realizing that she had no hope of returning to her tree, Callidora sat down and cried. 

“The other spirits tried to console her, but they too had their trees to think about, and so one by one, they returned back to their trees until Callidora sat there, crying and alone.

“It was then that Phanes came out of his hiding place, and asked, ‘Is there something wrong, my lady?’

“Hearing his voice, Callidora stopped crying and turned towards Phanes. ‘I have lost my stola and now I cannot return home. Have you seen my stola, stranger?’

“‘No,’ Phanes lied. ‘But I have a home you can return to, if you wish. It is not much, but it is a home.’

“Thinking that it was at least better than being alone in the forest, looking at the home she can never return to, Callidora took Phanes’s hand and stayed in his home. At first, she did not laugh and did not sang and did not dance. She was a stranger in a strange land, learning things she did not understand. 

“But Phanes was kind and loving and patient, and soon she began to feel comfortable living among men. More than that, she began to feel comfortable in sharing Phanes’s hearth and home, for his kindness had also captivated her. And then, she began to laugh loudly and sing sweetly and dance brightly again. 

“One day, Phanes asked her to marry him, and she said yes, for why would she say no? She had only one condition, though. She would be a wife, and she would do all the duties a wife would do, but Phanes must never come inside the room when she is weaving. Phanes, not seeing why he should say no, for now he had gotten his heart’s desire, said yes.

“And so they began life as husband and wife. With Callidora’s help, Phanes had enough to buy a small flock of sheep, and they tended to their lamb, taking their milk and wool. Phanes made yogurt out of the milk, and Callidora spun the wool into threads and wove them into cloths.

“Slowly, their herd grew. No matter how many cloths Callidora wove, there was always enough thread for Phanes to sell. On and on it continued, until their house was filled with spools of thread that had not been sold by Phanes.

“Phanes now had many things in life, but one thing he never lost was his cleverness. He wanted to see how his wife managed to weave so many cloths and still have wool left to sell, but he remembered what she said before she agreed to marry him. And so Phanes slowly carved out a hole in the room she used for weaving, and once that hole was big enough to see through, sat down when his wife had entered the room, and watched. 

“What a sight he saw. Callidora’s hands moved so quickly that even Phanes, with his still sharp eyes, cannot see them. One spool of thread became a length of cloth so long, it can be spun around a man three times and still be trailing down the ground. Seeing that, Phanes remembered two things. That his wife was a spirit of the forest, and he had stolen her power, and that his wife was a being, and she was not his to steal.

“Phanes stood up, and took the stola from where it was hidden, still in the firewoods he had gathered that day. He held it in his hands and waited in front of the door of Callidora’s weaving room, and, when Callidora emerges from it, he knelt down in front of her, and placed the stola in her hands.

“Callidora knew exactly what that was, and she knew exactly what that meant. Her first thought was anger, that her husband had taken what was not his to take. But then she remembered that even though he had taken her stola and lied about it, he had not forced her to stay. He had not forced her to marry him. That was her choice, after she had known him, liar and all.”

Here, Hector stopped, for when his wife had told this story at Xenia’s wedding, she had stopped there too. Xenia had known what she meant by that story, and Hector had never thought to ask his wife for more. 

“And?” Gen asked. 

Looking at his son’s face, Hector wished he had asked his wife where she had heard this story. It was most likely at her own _reni_ night, for Hector had not known this story until he heard her tell it at their daughter’s night. A wisdom from one married thief to another, and Hector had never wished that it was his wife who was here more than this moment. 

“And?” Gen asked again, sounding just like when he was five, when he asked for more and more stories from his mother, instead of the hero of one nation and the future king of another. 

Hector met his son’s eyes, and remembered how his wife had spun stories of her own for their children. They were not in any of the myths Hector himself had heard as a child, but did stories not become true the moment someone gave life to them? 

“And so Callidora pulled her husband to his feet and clothed him with the wool she had spun and weaved. Then she fed him with the milk and yogurt he had made, and, when he was fed and clothed, took the stola and returned to her tree, for her tree had suffered greatly in her absence.

“Then, once her tree had returned to her original splendour, she came back to the house she had built together with her husband, hang her stola at the door, and became his wife. And whenever she leaves to tend to her tree, she always returns, and she always hangs her stola at the door, and she is always both a spirit and a wife.”

They sat together in silence after that. Hector had no more wisdom to give, not to his youngest son, his god-touched, god-blessed, god-chosen son. So they sat together, waiting for the day in which the Thief of Eddis would be married to the Queen of Attolia. 

When the sky turned purple, signalling the coming dawn, Hector walked towards his son and held his head in his hands. Then, he kissed his forehead, because his wife would have done it, and she was not here. Hector could not dress someone in finery, nor does he have any skill in thieving, but this he could do, and so this he would do. 

“You are my son,” he said. What he didn’t say was that Hector loved him so much, seeing him married to a woman who appeared in his nightmares felt like living a nightmare itself. What he didn’t say was that Hector would have done anything for him; he would have wrapped his chains around his son’s neck and pulled and let that haunt him throughout eternity rather than let his son die a gruesome death. What he didn’t say was that if he had said a word about it, Hector would have spirited him away from this forsaken land even before he had finished saying the word, lack of thieving skills be damned. 

He didn’t say any of that, but, with his head still in Hector’s hands, Eugenides nodded, and Hector knew he understood what he could not say. Hector pressed another kiss onto his son’s forehead, this time for himself, and pulled his son to his feet. 

Dawn has come, and it was time for Hector to bring his son to the altar on the hastily built temple on the top of the acropolis, and watch as Eugenides married the woman who had maimed him. 

**Author's Note:**

> the _reni_ night tradition is from the Javanese tradition of midodareni. You can read about it [ here ](https://www.indoindians.com/the-magical-javanese-wedding-ceremony/). The myth is taken from the Jaka Tarub myth, which, surprisingly, took only a little tweaking to fit the QT's world. The Jaka Tarub myth is also the myth that inspired the midodareni night. You can read about it [ here ](https://indonesianfolktales.fandom.com/wiki/Jaka_Tarub_and_Seven_Apsaras) (bear in mind that none of these are good representation of the tradition and myth, it's just the best I can find in English, short of writing an article about them myself.)
> 
> again, this is just an excuse for me to shamelessly put in my myths in a story set in the mediterranian-inspired world, which is WORLDS away from my own. I also took a LOT of liberties with the myths and tradition, but hey, as Gen said, I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT
> 
> thank you for reading!


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